Silent Sports Sounds Off

Over a three-hour period last Sunday, Dodge County Sheriff’s deputies issued warnings – no tickets, unfortunately – to 10 ATV and snowmobile riders speeding on the Wild Goose State Trail, according to an article based on a sheriff’s department press release in today’s Fond du Lac Reporter.

The short piece points out that the Wild Goose Trail – a 34-mile crushed limestone rail-trail between Juneau in Dodge County and the city of Fond du Lac, and skirting the western edge of the Horicon Marsh National Wildlife Refuge – “is a multiple use trail used year round for walking, cross-country skiing, ATVs and snowmobiling.”

The speed trap was a response to complaints the sheriff’s office receives from nonmotorized users every year.

Although state law requires ATVers and snowmobilers to slow to 10 mph when within 100 feet of another person, the motorized users issued warnings were traveling 14 to 28 mph. If nearly three times the speed limit doesn’t sound very fast to you, consider the fact that that would still constitue speeding in a car on most residential streets – streets the Wild Goose hikers and bicyclists are not traveling so as to get away from motorized traffic and closer to nature.

A year ago, silent sports enthusiasts in Fond du Lac County successfully fended off an outrageously greedy attempt by ATVers to get access to all nonmotorized state trails within the county. The hikers, bikers and skiers lost a subsequent fight, however, to keep ATVs off the Eisenbahn Trail in the winter when conditions are not conducive to snowmobiling, which has been allowed there.

Motorized and nonmotorized trail users are still mixing it up on the Wild Goose despite Dodge County recreation enforcement officer Mike Matoushek pointing out that “the last thing we need is for a pedestrian to be struck, injured or killed by a snowmobile or ATV.”

The fact that there any self-propelled users of the trail to complain about speeding motorheads at all is worth noting. Multiuse trails that allow ATVs tend to become defacto ATV trails because of what the DNR calls “asymmetrical recreation conflict.”

As the DNR’s 2005-2010 SCORP report states, “It is evident that ATV riding is incompatible with every other land-based activity but snowmobiling. Hiking, on the other hand, is supplementary or complementary with all other activities.”

ATVers and snowmobilers, accustomed to the noise and speed they generate and wearing helmets that muffle that engine noise and narrow their line of sight, are not affected in the least by the presence of walkers and cyclists. Silent sports enthusiasts, however, who prefer to hear their own footsteps, breathing and the natural world, are and will be driven away by the presence of ATVers. The only question is whether someone gets hurt or killed before the hikers and bikers leave for good.

It is the contention of an increasing number of silent sports advocates, myself included, that “multiuse” trails are a myth; a cannard promoted primarily by ATVers to fool public officials into thinking “no one will be excluded.” But as incompatible as motorized and nonmotorized users are, the latter have little choice but to cede ground to the former.

ATVers seeking access to nonmotorized trails – be they the Badger, Eisenbahn, Gandy Dancer, Seymour-New London, Amery-Dresser state trails and Ice Age Scenic Trail, among others – by getting them designated “multiuse” are simply stealing trails from the vast majority of users, insulting the public’s intelligence and jeopardizing its well being.

– Joel Patenaude

For more than a year I looked forward to seeing on the big screen “Spirit of the Marathon,” a five-year effort to capture the considerable training and emotion citizen and elite runners alike go through preparing for and running 26.2-mile races.

The film was all the more poignant because it focused on a handful of runners heading into the 2005 Chicago Marathon. Neither I nor 99.9 percent of my 40,000 closest friends who ran that race were profiled, but we endured as much as the movie’s stars. Watching the movie last Thursday allowed us to experience the event anew.

The 20 minutes of “extras” that followed the film, like you would find on a DVD, were illuminating as well

That “one-night-only” screening at thousands of theaters across the country did not disappoint. Fortunately there will be an encore presentation at select theaters on Thursday, Feb. 21. For a list of participating theaters, go to www.fathomevents.com.

– Joel Patenaude

From Friends of L.O.G. Greenway, Inc.:

Eau Claire, WI — In a closely watched and very significant case for users of Wisconsin’s state trails, Polk County Judge Molly GaleWyrick issued a decision earlier this week which prohibits the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) from allowing the use of motorized all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) and snowmobiles on the new Amery to Dresser State Trail in Polk County, Wisconsin.

The Amery to Dresser State Trail is a segment of the over 1,700-mile newly designated “Aldo Leopold State Trail System.”

The court decision for the petitioners, a trail conservation and recreation group named Friends of L.O.G. Greenway, Inc. and individual property owner Richard Roos, came after protracted litigation in two different cases against DNR over its decisions to approve a motorized trail plan approved by Polk County. The plan would have allowed ATVs and snowmobiles to be used on the scenic and environmentally sensitive Amery to Dresser State Trail, which the petitioners and the City of Amery had expected to be used only for walking, bicycling, cross-country skiing, and other non-motorized uses.

In her decision against DNR, Judge GaleWyrick ruled that the state trail statute, Wis. Stat. § 23.175(2)(a), “plainly limits state trails to non-motorized use”; that DNR’s environmental assessment (EA) for the Amery to Dresser Trail was “unreasonable” because it considered the trail as a local resource rather than as a segment of the much larger statewide trail system; and that DNR violated a 2005 stipulated court order with the same petitioners by once again accepting Polk County’s motorized master plan for the trail when it approved the final EA.

The court remanded the matter to DNR “for further proceedings consistent with Wis. Stats. § 1.11 and Wisconsin Administrative Code Ch. NR 150.” The decision also stated that: “The DNR is specifically ordered to prohibit use of motorized vehicles on the trail unless they meet the limited exceptions found in Wis. Stat. 23.175 or Wisconsin Administrative Code § NR 51.70 to 51.75.” (These exceptions are only for “riders of electric personal assistive mobility devices.”)

According to Attorney Glenn Stoddard, who represented the petitioners in both cases, “This decision is a victory for everyone who is concerned about adverse environmental impacts of ATVs on Wisconsin’s state trails. It is also a major victory for the petitioners and all non-motorized users of the Amery to Dresser State Trail, because ATVs and snowmobiles conflict directly with the non-motorized uses of such trails. Hopefully, it will be a wake-up call for DNR that will enable the agency to do a better job of addressing environmental issues and use conflicts on state trails in the future.”

Read and add to messageboard thread here.

I’m a bit late reading Bill McKibben’s thin volume Long Distance: Testing the Limits of Body and Spirit in a Year of Living Stenuously about the environmental writer’s serious training as a cross-country skier in 1997 (the book came out in 2000). But with temps in the 40s and incessant rain over the last couple days robbing me of skiing opportunities, I’m back to running (puddle hopping, is more like it), spending more time on the basement NordicTrack, and reading.

The current meltdown brings to the fore every cross-country skiers’ lament and particular sensitivity: Winters aren’t what they used to be.

“Winter, and especially the recent lack of it, makes Nordic skiing a tenuous enterprise,” McKibben writes in Long Distance. “I’ve obsessed about global warming for more than a decade; my books on the topic have been translated into 18 languages; I’ve written hundreds of articles, given hundreds of speeches. But I’ve never found an audience as receptive as the ski salesman.”

McKibben and skier/Silent Sports columnist Mark Parman exchange grievances over global warming in the current issue of the magazone. You can read the article here.

On the ground here in central Wisconsin, Iola Winter Sports Club ski trail groomer Phil Johnsrud told me yesterday he was remaining optimistic the base would hold in spite of the rain. But he’s hearing plenty of worried grumblings from skiers.

“I’ve seen this happen too many times,” Johsrud said of promising early ski seasons done in by a warm spell. “If we just get a couple inches of snow, I think we’ll be OK.”

If not over the long term, as McKibben warns, we can still hope to be skiing again in the short term.

– Joel Patenaude

Another long, silent sports weekend was had, if not by all, by myself and a couple family members.

Sunday, my brother-in-law and I spent a great couple hours skiing the Zillmer trails in the Northern Unit of the Kettle Moraine State Forest near Campbellsport, Wis. I broke out my waxable classics for the first time this season but didn’t get the grip wax right. I had to resort to the flying herringbone – a dying art, according to Lee Borowski on one of his videos – on all the inclines.

Speaking of Borowski, he considers the Zillmer ski trails among the best in the state. After skiing there Dec. 20, the Silent Sports columnist reported on Skinnyski.com, “The inner brown loop is perfect for youngsters and beginners. The southern loops have rolling terrain that is not too severe and the northern yellow loop has all the climbing any Birkie trainer could want.”

Needless to say, Adam and I did two laps of yellow and a lap of green for 12 miles even. There were lots of cars and skiers coming and going in the parking lot but the trails were uncongested. A snowmobile-mounted groomer passed us twice, first to improve the classic tracks then to grade the wider skate lane.

On Monday morning, my Madison-based sister bravely ventured unaccompanied to Neenah to run the New Year’s Day 5K. Called in to work, my wife was unable to join her as planned. (They both received calls the night before from no less than race director Gloria West asking them if they would accept a race hat in a color other than what they ordered. Talk about hands on.) My sister returned to report that it was a well organized event with a great post-race spread – which, as a professional cook, she would know.

Her run inspired me to venture outdoors late that afternoon. But I was a bit crazier for donning snowshoes and trying to high step on down the local high school cross country course. Within a quarter mile of leaving the parking lot, I was gasping for breath. The temp had dropped to about 12 degrees and I was not yet into the woods and out of the even colder wind. Footing was tricky and exhausting thanks to drifting snow a foot deep in places and uneven where others had previously hiked. I had barely covered three miles in 40 minutes when I called it quits. My calves are still complaining this morning.

Still, there’s no better way to welcome a new year than by challenging yourself by something out of the ordinary. I hope it sets the stage for a physically varied and adventurous 2008.

I wish no less for you, too, my fellow silent sporters.

– Joel Patenaude